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Reviewing #Creatorgate: Why a scientist shouldn't use the word "Creator" in their articles

EDITOR'S NOTE: An article in the online scientific journal PLOS One has been making headlines for its use of the word “Creator” in regards to the design of the human hand. Several prominent scientists took to Twitter to express their outrage at PLOS One for allowing an article with “supernatural” language to be published. Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis and the pro-Intelligent Design blog Evolution News and Views both responded with strong rebukes of what they see as anti-Christian (or just anti-”design”) bias in the scientific world. On March 4, the editors of that journal formally retracted the article, even as it became clear that the original “Creator” language stemmed from a misunderstanding of the word by the authors, who are Chinese and blame poor translation. In fact, the article fully affirms evolutionary descent of humankind and is in no way replacing natural explanations with supernatural ones.

We at BioLogos think that #creatorgate (as it has come to be called) demonstrates in vivid detail the problems with the way our culture thinks about faith and science, letting the most strident voices control the conversation. Today and next week, we will be publishing several responses to the controversy from BioLogos voices. Our hope is that these responses will encourage Christians to think carefully about how to respond to incidents such as this, and contribute constructively to the public conversation about faith and science.

Should a scientist ever include the word “Creator” in a scientific publication? I’m not going to say never, but in general I think the answer is no, and at the very least, one should consider carefully whether such a mention is warranted and how it might be construed.

My answer will at first be vexing to many non-scientists, especially to Christians who believe that scientists today are for the most part opposed to God. Indeed, the “scientists oppose Christianity” view was emotionally voiced by Ken Ham this week, who writes that the outrage on social media to the PLOS One publication, “shows how utterly intolerant secularists are to anything even remotely Christian. They don’t want people to even hear any possibility of something that might support creation.”

On the one hand, I’m sympathetic to Ham. Our culture seems more polarized than ever, and some of the online responses to the PLOS One paper were woefully ignorant and intolerant of Christianity. There is clearly a lot of frustration with and suspicion of anything remotely “creationist,” which I both understand as a scientist and grieve as a creationist (admittedly of a different variety than Ham!). On the other hand, having looked at the paper in question, I agree with the many scientists who have questioned how the paper made it through the peer review process. The references to “the Creator” don’t contribute anything scientifically to the paper, and as we have seen, they mightily distract from the scientific content as described.

The #creatorgate controversy is not primarily about the methods the scientists used or the data they reported. The concern is with the author’s conclusion that their study confirms that the architecture of the human hand “is the proper design by the Creator,” arrived at through a long and gradual evolutionary process. That the human hand—like everything else in the natural world—was designed by the Creator God through an evolutionary process is a perspective we promote here at BioLogos, of course. God’s creation is a product of his will, and many of God’s artistic “brushes” (thanks for that metaphor, Jeff Schloss!) are regular, natural processes that lead to beautiful, ingenious designs. But we don’t think that evolutionary creation is a scientifically derivable position. It’s a lens we look through, as Christians, as we seek to make sense of God’s Creation as revealed through science.

I’ve argued elsewhere that Christians working in science should embrace “methodological naturalism,” the practice of limiting science to natural explanations. Such a practice prevents us from lapsing into scientism, the idea that can science can explain everything. Avoiding mentions of God in scientific publications isn’t censorship—or at the very least, it isn’t necessarily censorship. It’s an appropriate practice that helps scientists of various worldviews collaborate effectively.

This story is complicated by a couple of factors. First, it seems that the scientists who wrote the study aren’t in fact creationists (at least, not of the anti-evolutionary sort). English is their second language and they say they didn’t intend to use the word “Creator;” they meant “Nature.” Furthermore, open-access journals such as PLOS One are sometimes critiqued for having lower quality control standards than others, while charging a premium to authors for the privilege of publishing. So this is not simply one more example of “scientists vs. Christians”—a completely false dichotomy, by the way—but a legitimate conflict about peer review and editorial oversight in a world where scientific collaborations and publications span geographical, cultural, and language barriers.

In summary, I don’t think the authors should have used the word “Creator.” They apparently didn’t mean to, and the editors should have picked up on their comments and suggested alternate language. Even so, it’s a pity the entire paper was retracted (a major, major blow for a scientist), and the fact that it was retracted only goes to show how charged both the creation/evolution culture wars and intramural disputes about publication standards continue to be.

Notes

Citations

Applegate, K. (2016, March 10). Reviewing #Creatorgate: Why a scientist shouldn't use the word "Creator" in their articlesRetrieved March 19, 2018, from /blogs/kathryn-applegate-endless-forms-most-beautiful/reviewing-creatorgate-why-a-scientist-shouldnt-use-the-word-creator-in-their-articles

References & Credits

About the Author

Kathryn Applegate is Resources Editor at BioLogos. She received her PhD in computational cell biology at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. At Scripps, she developed computer vision tools for analyzing the cell's infrastructure, the cytoskeleton. Kathryn joined the BioLogos staff in 2010.

"What kind of evidence would somebody need to have in order to be rationally compelled to say that an event was a miracle? That person would have to know that this event could not possibly be explained by future science. But not only is such a belief unwarranted, it’s also bad for future science to believe it."

These provocative words are written by Princeton philosopher Hans Halvorson (a Christian), in an article that itself provoked some good discussion when we posted it last week.

Check out the full article (link in comments), and then respond to the quote above. Does calling something a "miracle" put it in danger of being debunked by future scientific advances? Is there a different way of thinking about the concept of a miracle, that might satisfy his concerns? Feel free to discuss below. ... See moreSee less

Hard for me to see that the Incarnation is not a miracle. For others , God could be working on a quantum level?? But does the latter fall into”God of the Gaps?”

5 hours ago · 1

Amen🌀 Jesus doesn't care about Alabama Crimson Tide 🏈 football. Instead, He loves 🌀 Spring and the start of ⚾ baseball season. That's why He started His own story, "In the Big inning..." Just watch 🌀 His wind-up! You need to start reading your 📖 Bible!

3 hours ago

One thing for sure, it is more a philosophical question than a religious one.

7 hours ago · 2

Great article. In answer to you question about a different way of thinking about miracles that would "satisfy his concern", to me it would make sense to explain a miracle in terms of something that everyone (religious and non-religious alike) would have no explanation for, given our current understanding of science.

Science will never describe the full expanse of reality. Science is not geared to that end. This is basic knowledge.
Reason is the handmaiden of faith because faith takes us where reason cannot go. As such, the only thing that will ever describe the fill expanse of reality is faith supernaturally given by God, i.e. God graciously enlightening the intellect. Reason gives way to faith because reason is limited in its capacity to describe reality.
This is not to say reason is not essential. It is the handmaiden of faith because it is a true and good servant to faith. As such faith and reason never contradict, but faith does transcend reason.

10 hours ago · 5

I'm tired of these types of questions constantly being proposed. It was not a scientist who discovered that dead human beings do not rise from the dead (which is different than Jesus resurrection) it was simple human experience. Therefore, the question is rather silly to ask. My first reply is to ask: who cares if Jesus resurrection contradicts science? My second reply is to make the observation that this question is phrased in such a way that science is presupposed as the final arbiter of truth claims like the resurrection of Jesus. Thirdly, how exactly could scientists study the resurrection of Jesus? Scripture tells us that God raised Jesus from the dead. Can science study this claim? Fourth, it would be one thing to subject the resurrection to some sort of scientific investigation ( I know not what or how) and a completely different thing to study what the resurrection of Jesus means for me or you personally. It seems Biologos is in need of some good theologians and philosophers to add to this conversation. Finally, this question smacks of a form of Evidentialism that would make faith subject to the vagarities of evidence. In the end I have to affirm that it matters little to me if the resurrection of Jesus did contradict science. On another note, one could ask: whose "science" and which scientists?

3 hours ago · 1

Exactly so.

11 hours ago · 1

Mmmmmm, I would say that a resurrection is contradictory to observed evidence, but that's fine. A God that is truly supernatural would act supernaturally at times. Although, I suppose God could whip up a truly natural Star Trek hypospray to overcome the decay process and relaunch the body's systems.